Hackers behind last week’s $530 million cryptocurrency heist - one of the biggest ever -- have started to move and are trying to sell some of the stolen “XEM” coins, the vice president of the foundation behind the digital currency said on Tuesday.
Jeff McDonald of the NEM Foundation, creators of the XEM cryptocurrency, said he had traced the stolen coins to an unidentified account, and that the account owner had begun trying to move the coins onto six exchanges where they could then sell them.
The location of the account was not yet known and McDonald could not immediately confirm how many of the stolen coins had been spent.
“[The hackers are] trying to spend them on multiple exchanges. We are contacting those exchanges,” Singapore-based McDonald told Reuters.
Hackers made off with roughly 58 billion yen ($532.6 million) from Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc late last week, raising big questions about security and regulatory protection in the emerging market.
XEM is the world’s 10th biggest cryptocurrency. As of 1634 GMT, XEM was trading at around $0.83 per coin, according to trade website Coinmarketcap, with a total market value of around $7.5 billion.